Gridcoin could even make its own BOINC projects and in a pinch they could even be based on meaningless calculations
That's not possible, nobody would vote to whitelist such a project and it would only be a burden, since Gridcoin is a Proof-of-Stake crypto and BOINC calculations are rewarded on top of Proof-of-Stake mechanism (i.e. BOINC projects aren't really necessary for the functioning of the network and in an emergency Gridcoin can carry on without BOINC, reverting to Proof-of-Stake only).
Thanks for the feedback and info! I made edits. Just to make sure, you are referring to the meaningless calculations part not the creation of projects by Gridcoin users in general part?
Yes, anyone can create any BOINC project, Gridcoin users included. In fact, we even had a project called Gridcoin Finance, running for quite some time. But of course, even a project created by Gridcoin users has to get whitelisted first. And if it's just meaningless rubbish without any useful purpose, then it won't pass the whitelisting vote.